Place · granite mountain range · Pakistan
Karoonjhar Mountains
A granite ridge rising about three hundred metres out of the sand at Nagarparkar — the only rock in the Pakistani Thar, and therefore the only place in it that holds water. Seasonal streams run off the granite into pools that carry the area through the dry months, and the outcrop gathers around it the Jain temples of Nagarparkar, the Churrio Jabal Durga Mata shrine and a Rana Rajput political history. Commercial granite quarrying on the range is locally contested.
- Function
- Landscape & environmental change
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 24.341, 70.733
Worth knowing
A Sindhi saying has it that Karoonjhar rains gold, which in a desert means water: the granite sheds runoff into rock pools instead of letting it sink, so the only hills in the Thar are also its only reliable supply.
Connections (2)
- Site adjacencyGori Temple, Nagarparkar
The temples are where they are because the granite is. Karoonjhar is the only rock in the Pakistani Thar and therefore the only place in it that holds surface water, shedding monsoon runoff into pools instead of letting it sink into sand. That is what allowed a settled Jain merchant community at Nagarparkar to build and maintain stone temples in a desert, and what gathers the Churrio Jabal Durga Mata shrine and the Rana Rajput forts around the same outcrop. Quarrying the granite commercially is now locally contested for exactly this reason.
- Pitha network withHinglāj Mātā
The two Devi shrines of Pakistan's arid west, and both are in rock. Hinglāj sits in a cave in a Makran gorge in Las Bela and is counted among the Shakta pithas, drawing the largest Hindu pilgrimage in Pakistan each April. Churrio Jabal Durga Mata stands on the Karoonjhar granite at the other end of the desert, and its festival is the Tharparkar equivalent. Both survive because they are remote, both are reached by yātrā from Karachi, and both are on the tentative heritage list.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Karoonjhar Mountains”. Pakistan UNESCO tentative list submission for the Nagarparkar cultural landscape (2016); Sindh Environmental Protection Agency quarrying records.
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